Senate GOP low on Homeland Security options

Senate Republicans are running low on options on funding for the Department of Homeland Security – staying tangled in a messy fight over President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration as time runs short before the Feb. 27 deadline.

GOP senators on Monday were open to a potential stopgap measure for DHS funding that would buy lawmakers time should the deadline come and go with no resolution. And they also began deferring to their colleagues in the House to see if lawmakers there could devise a Plan B to get Republicans out of their DHS jam.

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“I think we have to figure out what the House’s next play probably is at this point,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican.

Signaling that yet another vote on the House version of the DHS bill was unlikely, Thune added: “At some point, we have to figure out the next iteration of this big discussion.”

Senate Democrats blocked the DHS funding bill from being considered on the floor three times last week, protesting provisions in the legislation that would unravel President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration – drawing criticisms from Republicans who say they can’t change the bill more to the Democrats’ liking unless the minority party allows the chamber to take it up.

But Democrats – who are demanding a so-called clean funding bill free of the immigration riders – won’t even allow the legislation to be considered. That has left Republicans in a bind over how they can proceed on the must-pass bill.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have repeatedly stressed that they have already done their job and it was up to the Senate to come up with legislation that can pass their chamber. “The House has already moved a bill,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), said Monday night.

Thune also left the option of a short-term continuing resolution on the table, telling reporters on Monday that it is “always” a possibility. Other Senate Republican leaders have said they don’t want a stopgap measure since it only delays a standoff for a short period – although several top House Republicans privately have suggested that it may be the only outcome.

Senate Republican leadership aides said little Monday about their next step on DHS funding, saying that members were discussing their options. Senior aides for Senate Democrats, who have aggressively pushed their Republican counterparts on a clean funding bill free of immigration riders, were non-committal Monday on a potential stopgap spending measure. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said a short-term funding bill ties his department’s hands and has urged Congress to pass an appropriations bill for the rest of the fiscal year that doesn’t include provisions to override Obama’s immigration actions.

“I just don’t know,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Monday when asked about a solution to the DHS stalemate. “We’ll have to work from the House and see what can be done.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also said he would back a short-term continuing resolution to keep DHS funded, but said that wasn’t the preferred option.

“All I can say is, they’re united behind the idea that they support the president’s executive action more than they support DHS. They’ll lose here,” Graham said of Democrats. “What they’re doing is supporting an executive overreach that is not gonna go down with the American people.”